Tai Chi Zero really only exists to set up Tai Chi Hero. It looks amazing, but it's super cheesy.
I saw a trailer for Tai Chi Hero, and it looked cool, so I
decided to check out the prequel before I saw it. I read on IMDb that Hero was
better than Zero, so I wasn't expecting much. The whole kitschy/cheesy/video
game feel was kind of obnoxious. It wasn't my thing. I didn't like the pop-ups
about the style, or the diagrams that showed up under people's feet. And I
especially didn't like the part where it would say "That's Angelababy as
Chen Yu Niang! She's a famous actress!" It really took you out of the
movie, and I don't know who those actors are, anyway.
The plot was a little empty, but I tend to enjoy fairy tale
movies, and this one was creative enough to be entertaining.
I wasn't expecting much from Hansel & Gretel. Roeper
didn't review it. IMDb said it was okay, albeit gory, so I decided I didn't
need to see it in the theater. The acting wasn't bad. I haven't been a fan of
Jeremy Renner yet, and I've never heard of Gemma Arterton before, although
apparently she was in Prince of Persia. It was cool seeing Peter Stormare as
the sheriff, though.
I liked how the language was modern. They got to use a lot
of curse words since it was rated R, and that worked well.
The Great Gatsby has a pretty uninspired plot, but the
cinematography is great. It's a good way to find out what the story's all
about, if you aren't familiar with it already.
I've never read The Great Gatsby, and I had no idea what it
was about, so I was a blank slate coming into the movie. I was surprised by how
long it took for Leo to make an appearance. I was like, "he is in this
movie, right?" The opening parts with all the partying were kind of
obnoxious and hard to follow. The camera was all over the place, and everything
seemed a little shaky, a little off. Maybe that had to do with the 3D aspect
(although I didn't watch it in 3D). Everything was kind of exaggerated and
crazy, which was probably the effect they were going for, but I didn't exactly
enjoy it.
I felt bad for Tobey, always getting pushed around by
everyone all the time. I think it would've been interesting to do the party
scenes with the music they actually would've listened to at the time. The rap
music worked to get a "party" feel going, and it never felt out of
place like it did in The Man with the Iron Fists (maybe RZA could take a note
from Gatsby, or maybe rap music just fits partying better than martial arts),
but it did feel like the only modern thing in the movie.
The Illusionist's beautiful animation is captivating, but
the story is really depressing.
Triplets of Belleville was a great movie. I loved the
musicality of it, and how there was hardly any (no?) dialogue. The Illusionist
is also beautifully animated. I love the small quirks of the animation, like
how The Illusionist's hands move when he packs up his poster. I loved how crazy
the rabbit was. But ultimately it's basically the saddest movie ever, and if I
had known that going in, I probably wouldn't have watched it.
Death Race is a great movie. Death Race 3: Inferno is not. There
were multiple times when I was watching this that I wished I hadn't wasted my
time. The concept is still cool, and there are a few enjoyable moments and
lines, but not nearly enough to make up for the painfully terrible acting.
Death Race, I wish I knew how to quit you. I thought I was
going to get to see The Illusionist (animated one, not Edward Norton), but the
library didn't have it in stock after all. I was frustrated enough about that
to just watch Death Race 3 without doing any research on it. Death Race was a
great movie, and all I remember about Death Race 2 was that it sucked. The
trailer for Death Race 3 looked promising, so I gave it a shot.
That turned out to be a mistake. The acting was so bad it was downright
painful to watch. The star, the navigator, the villain, practically every actor
in the entire movie was terrible. Danny Trejo, Fred Koehler and Ving Rhames
were fine, but that's about it. There were actually a few good lines, but most
of the writing was terrible. The driver introductions were totally flat; no
info about the driver at all, just a flashy picture with their name. They did
have a couple interesting drivers; I actually felt sorry for all of them when
they died, which wasn't a good direction to go.
I guess because Luke Goss sucked so much, I really didn't
care about Frankenstein, and I wasn't interested in him beating the other
drivers. So much of the movie made no sense. Why were the prisoners always
allowed to tell all the guards to leave? Why was Katrina randomly washing the
floor by Carl's cell?
What Dreams May Come was a little heavy-handed, and I don't
agree with all the things they changed from the book, but I did like seeing where they were
going with it and how they represented things.
What Dreams May Come was on my "to see" list for a
while, but then I kind of lost interest in it. My boyfriend had a copy of the
book on the bookshelf, so I decided to check it out. It was an interesting
book, and that renewed my interest in seeing the movie. I would say about 75%
of the stuff in the movie wasn't in the book, and a lot of what was in the book
probably got lost in translation if you only saw the movie. I think a lot of
the themes were probably only hinted at in the movie; they came through for me
since I had read the book, but if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have seen them
so clearly.
The Man with the Iron Fists has some cool stuff going on.
Some of the acting is a little flat, but it's entertaining and it looks great.
It's nice that RZA got to make a movie. The Man with the Iron Fists is listed as a movie "by RZA," and that couldn't be any more true. He directed it, starred in it, and wrote the story, screenplay, and music. Crazy. It's a pretty epic movie. I'm not a classic martial arts movie fan, so it's hard to tell what's an homage and what's just not well done.
The costumes and props seemed a little cheap at times. They shot the movie in 52 days, so I guess it's reasonable to think they didn't have a lot of time for the other stuff, either. I could never get over the Lions' hair, but we'll assume that was on purpose. I think Dave Bautista is just the worst actor on the planet. I don't think there's any "homage" justification that can be made for his lack of performance. I liked the idea of this big guy who's just a total stone block, though.
